


Some Folks Just Shouldn't Marry

by valuna



Series: When Worlds Collide [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valuna/pseuds/valuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he ends up on a Starfleet shuttle next to Jim Kirk, Leonard McCoy was married. What happened?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Folks Just Shouldn't Marry

The bride's resplendent in the white couture Langerwang gown.

The groom's handsome in the black tux the bride picked out.

The bride's smiling, chatting with her maid of honor.

The groom can't recall her name, not that she's said more than five words to him, or many others in the over-decorated hall. No one speaks to him. Well, that's not totally true. His best man's been talking his ear off, probably because he's about as bored as the groom. It's obvious he's not from the right side of the tracks. _Of course it is._ The bride's father, not to be thought of as his father-in-law, told him so. The only reason the wedding's going on is that the bride really wants to be a doctor's wife.

Or so he thinks until after the honeymoon, when she introduces him to her _boyfriend_. She didn't use the word, but the way they were cuddling on the lounger by the pool should have been a clue.

> _"Who is this?" he asks, sounding more naive than he should, having survived medical school._
> 
> "Pool boy," she replies.

  
But ever since he was a boy, knee-high to a grasshopper his grandmother would say, Leonard McCoy has often needed the two-by-four upside the head to get a clue.

The second clue is when the _boyfriend_ brings over his wife to one of their barbecues. He's dead tired from a 48-hour stint in the trauma center, but she's insistent about him getting to know her friends. There's a mention of sharing, swapping, which is more like a power nailer driving into his skull. He gets the headache, but doesn't quite know why.  


> _"Sweetheart, it's the 23rd century," she coos, like a mockingbird. "Everyone does this sort of thing." She's hanging on him, arms around his neck, lips pressing against his._
> 
> "I don't," he says, licking his lip to make sure there's no poison residue. "Whatever it is you want, I'm not part of it."

  
The wife throws a crystal candelabra, an old Earth heirloom, and it glances off his head while he's trying to answer her question about why he doesn't love her. He does. He thinks.

Finally, she drops the piano out the window, literal and figurative in one push, and Leonard McCoy spends the night in the nearest bar. It's the first of many nights, especially after he makes friends with the barkeep who has a stash of vintage Kentucky bourbon, a liquor that matches the finest Saurian brandy.  


> _"You know," he says, speech slurred, "I love the little lady. She's gorgeous, beauty queen, and she loves me."_
> 
> "Thought you said she dropped a piano on you?"

  
He nods, rubbing the dislocated shoulder that's feeling a lot better with each glass.   


> _"Yep. She just got angry. Fillies get that way, riled up some days."_

  
It's an excuse. Leonard McCoy's good at those, too, having excelled at making ones when his mother left them. _Maybe I should just give up on women._ It's a fleeting thought. Southern gentlemen don't bail out.

Then he comes home, soaked from the rain and swaggering a bit, to find everything he owns


End file.
